Data Centre Essentials

2What Drives the Need and the Various Types of Data Centres

From the outside, data centres may be seen as clean, windowless warehouses with thousands of circuit boards racked and arranged in rows, stretching down halls so long that operational staff on scooters may ride through the corridors of these rows of racks. But what drives the scale and growth of these intelligent data centre buildings? This chapter looks at the trends, current market, and industry structure and provides insights into the potential growth drivers, restraints, risks, and prospects. Those recent and legacy drivers of the data centre growth, the impacts, and the various generic types of data centres are all considered.

We, the populace, all interact with the internet, simply uploading our latest photos to Instagram, which may end up stored inside a vast data centre. The key driver's data centres that enable growth are becoming more recognisable. Data centres are where the cloud lives,¹ and our data, photographs, and music are stored. They are a critical component of the worldwide economy, whether you are a human being, a city, or a country. Likewise, the demand for data to enhance business performance is driving the growth of the data centre industry.

Data centres are also a fundamental part of the business enterprise, designed to support applications and provide services such as data storage, access management, backup, and recovery. Data centres also provide productivity applications, such as online meeting ...